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It’s never too late

TLH
Published 11:42 p.m. ET Dec. 23, 2013

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Carolyn Washington and her son Shawn share a proud moment together. Shawn Washington, 37, got his high school diploma during Franklin Academy's ceremony at the Tabernacle Baptist Church last week.
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Mike Ewen/Democrat
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Christmas came five days early for Shawn Washington and his mother, Carolyn Washington.

It couldn’t come soon enough.

On Friday, 37-year-old Shawn Washington received his high school diploma from Franklin Academy with his mother in the audience at Tabernacle Baptist Church.

He beamed. She teared up. A dream deferred had become a dream realized.

“I cried because it’s a prayer answered,” the single mother said. “I knew that he had it in him. When you raise them with good morals, it will come back around. He just made a wrong choice.”

Shawn Washington admits he made many wrong choices. The Tallahassee native was no longer in school by age 16. Trouble was a constant companion.

“I was in the streets. I wasn’t focused on school,” he said. “I wasn’t always a saint.

“I was around the wrong crowd doing the wrong things,” he added. “I can’t say I was always legitimate. I had an addiction to money.”

His travails as a teenager included more than two months in the hospital after Washington was shot four times in his left leg outside a Quincy nightclub. The leg was amputated below the knee.

At age 19, he was sentenced to five years in prison for selling cocaine. While Washington was in jail, a 1-month-old daughter began to grow up, barely aware of her father. His younger brother, Shelton, his only sibling, died at age 16 in a car crash while Washington was in jail.

Washington vowed to live a different life when he left Wakulla Correctional Institution on Sept. 20, 2000, but he couldn’t find the motivation to get a high school degree — no matter how many times his mother urged him to go back to school.

He worked odd jobs. For more than two years he ran a restaurant in Havana, Mother’s Touch: House of Soul Food and Fine Cuisine, until he was forced to close it in 2007, an early victim of the recession.

Washington became the father to a second daughter, and insisted that both of his girls go to school. He helped them with their homework, as best he could.

Washington finally was persuaded to go back to school last year, when he applied for a job at the nonprofit Helping Hands of North Florida. Helping Hands CEO Verda Owens directed Washington to Franklin Academy, a south-side Accelerated Christian School accredited by the Department of Education. Washington’s uncle, Ulysses Andrews, also began taking courses at Franklin Academy and also earned a diploma on Friday.

“I send a lot of clients to Franklin Academy. Shawn was one of the lucky ones to continue through the program,” Owens said. “He wants to make changes in his life. They say he has made a 100-percent turnaround change. I’m hoping he can stay on this track and can make something of himself.”

Washington wants to enroll at Tallahassee Community College, where dozens of Franklin Academy graduates are in school. His mother, Carolyn, a state employee for 31 years, dreams of establishing a counseling program with Shawn, some kind of family-run social work business.

“I wanted Shawn to get back in school because he’s very smart and he has the potential,” she said. “He mentors a lot of young men. I knew that he had it in him.”

Washington said he didn’t realize how important the high school diploma was to him until he had it in his hand Friday evening. He’s not looking back with regret over choices he knows he never should have made; he’s focused instead on a future teeming with promise.